Tree Climbing For Beginners

by Joyia Marie

  He ignored his phone when it rang. He determined to get to the school on time. He didn’t put it past her for Helen to call CPS as she threatened. He couldn’t even call it a threat. Helen promised and she always did what she promised unless someone like him made that impossible.

  Chapter Twelve: Jillian

  Jillian stared at the phone when it went to voice mail. This was the first chance she had to try to call Harold. When she got to the office, before she could sneak around to Harold’s office, her boss, Mrs. Fitzgerald had a list of prospects for her to go see. This was unusual as the sales staff was expected to generate their own leads.

  It wasn’t until she was in the car and plugging the first place in her GPS that she noticed the sites were in the little suburbs that bordered Fort Worth. The visits were scheduled in a way where she was zipping back and forth across town.

  She got back to the office in time to see Harold’s car pull away. It was lunch and she hoped he was on his way to corral his wife. Jillian thought long and hard about it this morning and if Helen wouldn’t come to heel, then Jillian might have to play step mommy for a while.

  Surely, this would bring the stubborn woman home if she saw another woman taking her place, she thought evilly. She called her friend at the phone company hoping to get a number and an address on Helen at her loft, but the friend couldn’t give her a definitive answer. There were plenty of Helens and even some H’s but no Helen Petersons.

  Jillian looked at the phone and wondered why Harold wasn’t answering. It was hours since she saw him drive away and he hadn’t come back, she had checked. She had this awful vision of Harold and Helen having marvelous makeup sex on the floor of her loft and laughing about the poor deluded Jillian.

  Jillian forced the vision away. It’s not true, she told herself. She was younger and prettier than Helen was and Harold knew he was lucky to have her. He was almost twenty years older than the age he thought she was and that was a real ego trip for men.

  Jillian put her phone down and saw Mrs. Fitzgerald’s face turn away. She felt a frisson of fear. Mrs. Fitzgerald was watching her this morning as if she had for the past few weeks as if Jillian was a problem she might have to solve. She knew Mrs. Fitzgerald was with the company for years and was a close friend of the Peterson family.

  Jillian was aware of the whispers for the past few weeks about her and the Peterson heir. Whispers she did nothing to quell and actually helped fuel. She thought if nothing else it would get back to Helen and force her to make a move.

  Now she wondered about the wisdom of that. Mrs. Fitzgerald had the power to fire her and she wasn’t in a position to leave yet. The money that Harold gave her so far wasn’t enough to support her so she needed this job until she had Harold down the aisle.

  Jillian hadn’t been putting forth a lot of effort in the past few months. She made her quotas, but nothing like the gung ho performance she showed in the beginning. In the beginning, she was actually trying to make a living, but lately she had just been marking time until Harold made his move.

  Jillian thought she might need to make a greater effort again, at least for a while. If by chance Helen and Harold did get back together, the first person to be out would be her. She needed to rebuild the next egg she had had before she moved here. She spent some on the move and some on the fancy lingerie that Harold liked so well.

  Jillian took one more look at her phone before plunging back into work. She was behind for the month and she had time to make up. She swore she wasn’t giving up on Harold but her mother taught her to always have a backup plan. You never knew when you’d have to move again.

  Chapter Thirteen: Helen

  I pulled in from my trip to the store exhausted, many hours later, and many dollars poorer. I was tempted to use the debit card from the household account, but I decided to play it straight. I didn’t need Harold’s money and I didn’t want to use it on my loft. This was to be a new beginning without anything from him in it. Except the twins when they came to visit.

  I had ended up at Wal-Mart because I needed more variety than the grocery store could provide. I had to set the loft up from scratch. I didn’t even have a shower curtain or a rod to hang it from. The few times I had showered there before, I tried to be neat, hoped for the best and wiped up the water from the bathroom floor when I was done.

  It was years since I was in Wal-Mart. Mrs. Gunderson usually took care of the shopping and if I needed something I just told her, and she got it on her next trip. Mrs. Gunderson was a treasure and I was seriously reconsidering my decision to leave her with Harold. Mrs. Gunderson was MY wife and unlike Harold, I wasn’t sure I was ready for a divorce. Then I thought about the twins and decided Mrs. Gunderson was best where she was, at least for now.

  I set the thought aside as I considered how I was going to get my multiple bags inside the loft. I looked around the dark garage, hoping to spy some helpful stranger who didn’t have ax murderer tendencies and then I fell in love. ‘Hello, handsome’, I thought as I looked at the muscular body next to my minivan.

  Oh my, I thought as I slipped out of my minivan and began to run my hands over the sleek frame and hard skin. I felt like I was in a trance and lovingly caressed the beautiful body in front of me. I hadn’t felt lust like this since before I met Harold. My motor was definitely running.

  I was yanked out of my trance by the clearing of a masculine throat behind me. My cheeks flushed at my forwardness as I turned around and looked at the suspected owner of the motorcycle I had just been fondling. It was years since I was near a bike and I was caressing and purring before I even realized what happened.

  I looked up and then up some more at the man standing next to the beat up truck. I am a tall woman and I’m used to looking a man in the eyes without much of a stretch, but this man was a lot taller than I was. Oh yes, please, my libido purred, years of flats echoing in my past. Harold was taller than I was but not enough to make heels comfortable. One inch too much and we’d look like Sonny and Cher, or at least in my mind.

  The battered truck had pulled in on the other side of my minivan while I was experiencing my vehicular love. I gave an inner nod of approval. Trucks are meant to be used not like the shiny fashion statements I saw many men driving. The man had an amused look on his handsome face and I saw the crease of a dimple. Oh my, I thought again. I do love the dimples.

  He cleared his throat again and I flushed when I realized I was staring at him as Eve had Adam in the garden. He was wearing a white T-shirt that splattered with many shades of paint, loose, worn jeans, and work boots. Size 14 work boots unless my discerning eyes were failing me. Again I say, ‘Oh my’.

  Now to be fair that is one area I had no complaints with with Harold. He was hung like a horse and if he had just known what to do with it we might still be happily married. I guess Jillian’s needs are a little less varied and a lot quicker than mine.

  Faster is not always better. Harold made love as if he had a train to catch and he was running late. I tried to teach him a few things, but like an old dog, he wasn’t up for learning any new tricks.

  I took a long admiring look at the broad chest covered with the multicolored T-shirt. This man had some nice real estate. He’s a painter, my long dead libido shouted and urged me to jump on him and climb his tall, powerfully built body like a tree.

  “Usually women introduce themselves before fondling my bike. She’s not that kind of lady,” he joked and I realized I still had my hands on the leather seat of his motorcycle. I snatched them back and put them behind my back before I thrust one out in greeting.

  “Sorry, I don’t know what came over me. My name is Helen Dudley and I live here,” I said, still looking at the fine specimen of manhood standing before me.

  I bit back a sigh when his firm, warm, slightly calloused hand enveloped mine. It was years since I had felt calluses. I reluctantly released his hand and ignored a lingering tingle as I had learned to do while I was married. During my years with Harold, I had turned
off my scoping equipment. I was like Grandma Gert in my belief in fidelity, at least my fidelity, and was determined to keep my nose clean.

  Even when I began to suspect Harold of having an affair, I kept my eyes pointed downward and off potential talent. Oh, let’s be honest. I knew Harold was having an affair. Good grief, he was coming home smelling like a French bordello, but I decided not to confront him. I was determined to maintain our ‘happy’ home for the kids’ sake and I was determined to break my family curse of single motherhood.

  Grandma Gert never remarried after her marriage to the philandering Grandpa John with the perforated posterior. She raised my mother and her sister, my aunt, Josephine, alone. She was content to paint and watch her girls grow up. I did have my suspicions about her relationship with the man who ran the art supply store but that was never proven.

  My mother hadn’t even made it to the altar with the man she claims is my dad. However, she seems comfortable with the hand fasting, they had had a Wiccan priestess perform. I’m still not sure if that makes me a bastard or not. She’s had her dalliances since dear old dad flew the coop but nothing permanent.

  I wanted to be the first woman in generations to raise my children with their father at least until they graduated from high school. Therefore, I turned my head and ignored the increasingly obvious signs of an affair. Lipstick on the collar, I get, but lip prints? Jillian was not subtle. She left so many signs on him I expected him to come home with urine on his leg next.

  “So you’re the mysterious tenant in 1A,” Mr. Handsome Mchandsome Pants said in his smooth chocolate voice. My mouth watered. I loved chocolate and after 14 years of bland, boring vanilla, I was ready for some chocolate.

  “Yeah,” I said huskily trying to get my raging hormones back under control.

  ‘Okay, yeah, he’s handsome, drives a bike, and sounds like a phone sex operator, but you’re still married. Just because Harold is a lying, cheating asshole doesn’t mean you get to be one too,’ I told my excited loins. ‘And a painter,’ reminded said loins with an excited squeal, ‘don’t forget he’s a painter’.

  I resolutely turned away. Obviously, this guy lived here and he would be around when my divorce was final. If it were meant to be, he’d be there when I was free and if not then, well, there’d be someone else. I wouldn’t be boffing anyone until Harold was officially out of the picture. ‘End it clean,’ Grandma Gert used to say, ‘and you can walk away with your head held high.’

  Clean or with a bullet, Grandma Gert was flexible to the last point, but I chose to leave gunplay out of my marriage. If Harold let something happen to my babies then all bets were off. Nevertheless, diddling Jillian wouldn’t get him shot. At least not by me, who knows who else’s husband, she was shagging while she was shagging mine.

  “Sorry about handling your machine,” I said then winced at the double entendre. My libido wasn’t quite willing to give up the ghost just yet. “But if you think that’s a lady, you are surely mistaken. That bike is 100 percent male,” I joked lamely to take the attention off my faux pas.

  I rushed around the side of my minivan and slid open the door. I began to pull bags out like a squirrel gathering its nut supply. If my hands were full of bags surely that would keep them off Mr. Handsome and his wonderful machines.

  “I’m Aiden Smyth and I’m in 1B. Nice to meet you,” he said, appearing next to me at the door of my car.

  He held out a hand and I held up mine full of bags. I gave him a rueful smile and tried to ease around him and toward my loft. No, touching him again would be a bad idea on so many levels. Best I keep my hands to myself and off the lovely smooth rippling chest, I could picture under that T-shirt of many colors.

  “Wow, you have a lot of stuff in there,” he said looking in my van.

  He looked amazed and I have to admit I was too. It hadn’t seemed like so much at the store, but crammed into my van it looked like an explosion at a grocery bag factory. There were bags in the seat, on the floor and stuffed under the tiny covering that made the trunk.

  “Yeah, I think I went overboard,” I admitted, looking at the bags.

  Just looking at them made me tired, and I still had to get them inside, get them unpacked and my loft was woefully short on storage space. I should have waited, I thought regretfully. All that would have to be moved when I got the contractor in to redo the loft anyway.

  “So I take it this stay is going to be a little longer than usual,” he said as he grabbed a handful of bags.

  I started to protest, then shut my mouth. If he wanted to help by schlepping my bags, far be it from me to complain. I was hoping for a helpful stranger to happen by and this one does just fine. The fact he was cute was just a bonus.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” I said insincerely and my face dropped when he started to set the bags down.

  He gave me a look with an arched eyebrow, then he laughed. Yeah, he does have a dimple I thought as I bathed in the glow of his sparkling white smile. This man had a smile that warmed better than a sun lamp and lord knows I was feeling a bit like a droopy plant lately.

  “Look, how about this. You don’t argue unless you mean it and I’ll only do what I want. If I didn’t want to help I wouldn’t,” he said as he hefted the bags again. I nodded and led the way to my loft door.

  Chapter Fourteen: Helen

  “Wow, love what you haven’t done with the place,” Aiden said as he carried the bags into the kitchen area.

  “Yeah, I’ve only been using this place as a place to work. But I guess I need to do something with it now,” I said with a flush.

  The best thing you could say about my loft was, it wasn’t cluttered. It still looked like exactly what it was, part of a warehouse. I had the basics installed, then ignored it. It was a place to write and the less clutter around me the better when I’m writing.

  “So what do you do?” he asked, “I’ve often wondered. The woman that sold me my loft said you were a writer but she didn’t elaborate. So what do you write? Books? Plays? Greeting cards?” He gave me another brilliant smile on the last and again I basked in it. If they could get that smile in pill form, they could market it as ‘Instant Happy’.

  “Books mostly and some article writing when I need the income,” I said as we made another trip. What do you do? Let me guess a painter?” I asked with a glance at his paint splattered T-shirt.

  I bit back another sigh, even looking grungy didn’t detract from the general loveliness of this man. An alpha man like this would probably have a coronary about being called ‘lovely’ but my head, my words.

  “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he said with yet another smile.

  This man would take a little getting used to. After Harold’s general dourness, being around Aiden was like having a chat with Ronald McDonald. “I’m a general contractor. Normally I just stand around with a clipboard and yell at people, but today one of my painters was out sick so I jumped in to keep us on schedule.”

  “Wow,” I said, unable to believe my luck. I didn’t know anything about his work, but I’d hire him for that smile alone. “So what kind of buildings do you do? You ever do anything like this,” I said with a gesture to my place.

  “Yeah, I did my place when I bought it. The lady that was there before hadn’t done much with it,” he said with a headshake. I could imagine. The former tenant was an artist who specialized in big paintings. Like wall covering big. She would be more interesting in space than decorating. “After we get your stuff in, come over, take a look around, and tell me what you think.”

  “Sounds good,” I said, stopping myself from an insincere demurral.

  That would be a hard habit to break. In suburbia, insincere was the order of the day. Someone offers you something, you turn it down whether you want it or not. Only after a couple of rounds of this are you allowed to say yes if it’s something you really want. Of course, you might end up with something you don’t want anyway, just to shut the other person up.

  He
smiled at me as if he knew how hard that was and then we concentrated on getting my many bags inside. He looked around in amazement at the mountain of bags when everything was inside. “What are you going to do with all this stuff?” he asked looking around. “You don’t have any place to put it.”

  I flushed again, I really went overboard. “A lot of it is groceries so that will go in the kitchen. The rest… I’ll figure that out as I go,” I finished weakly.

  “Okay,” he said doubtfully before opening a bag. “Let’s get the groceries put up and see where we’re at.”

  Again, I started to protest and again, I stopped myself. Maybe I could take him out for a burger or something once we were done, I assured myself. I really wasn’t used to dealing with an assertive man anymore. Harold was about as assertive as the Easter bunny. I’m still surprised he worked up the nerve to ask me out after that dinner with my mother.

  The groceries didn’t take long to put away. The cold stuff went into the old refrigerator and the rest was stacked haphazardly on the shelves over the sinks. It wasn’t pretty, but it would do for now. My new coffee maker took pride of place on the only counter between the refrigerator and the sink.

  There is a coffee shop down the street I usually frequented, when I was here, but if I were going to be living here, I’d need a private supply. I couldn’t see me walking down there in my night clothes which is what would happen if I didn’t have coffee ready when I woke up like I did at home.

  The rest of the stuff was stacked and tucked here and there around the open loft. I flushed again when he grabbed my box of tampons and looked at me in inquiry. I had to admire his aplomb. If Harold ran across my tampons, he would have blushed so hard his head would look like it burst into flame.

  “The bathroom. I’ll take them,’” I said. Then, I missed a grab to get them out of his hand. He snatched them out of the way and marched off to the tiny bathroom.